notes from meltdown central

from equinox to equinox - six months now since the Monday morning when, groggy from lack of sleep after a 72-hour shift on a project go-live, I wandered past 25 Bank Street and noticed that hundreds of people were standing around holding cardboard boxes and being filmed and recorded by the world's press.  Lehman Brothers had just gone bankrupt, and tremors of shock were only just beginning to ripple out through what, back then, we didn't know would soon be meltdown central.  Two weeks later, while on holiday deep in the mountains of Shikoku island in Japan, we turned on NHK news and listened in horrid fascination to the roll call of financial institutions either gone, or soon to disappear.
It seemed an era was coming to an end.

Now the days are getting longer again, and looking around, it doesn't look as if much has really changed.  25 Bank Street is emptier than it was, the value of new-build apartments has collapsed, a lot fewer of us still have jobs, but the wave front of the economic tsunami has rolled on and is now tearing a trail of destruction through the developing world, leaving just debris and an uneasy stillness here at the place where the banks set it in motion.  Mont Blanc is still here.  Even Massage Express is still here.  The caviar and champagne bar has gone but the Steak and Oyster bar is still doing a roaring trade.  And I'm still here, having chickened out on my promise to myself to retire at 60.  At times like these, who can afford to retire ?

What I do feel strongly now is that the time to blog about life at meltdown central has passed.   Nobody wants to hear about bankers any more.  Last week our manager took a group of us out for drinks to celebrate a team success (in itself a surprise - it's been a long, long time since the bank would allow this).   As he was only given a budget of £150 for food and drinks for 10 people, we thought it would be both practical and the right thing to do, to take our money to a nice local pub off the Canary Wharf Estate, the North Pole, which we did, but we didn't stay long.  The landlord didn't actually throw us out but he did the next best thing - refusing our credit cards, saying there was no food (though we could see other people being served), and kicking our bags around the floor on the grounds that we were in his way.  We took the hint and left after one drink.   We think of ourselves as nice, likeable people, but to the landlord of the North Pole we are just an expensive waste of space.
So, this is my last blog from meltdown central.  Who knows what the next six months will bring ?  If it actually does, as some commentators claim, bring the end of global capitalism as we know it, I will be back on here to let you know.  That would really change the world.  But I won't be holding my breath.